Wednesday, June 10, 2009

It’s not a huge one this week but I’m sure there’ll be something here to tickle your fancy. Perhaps it will even calm your screaming rage at the London Underground if you happen to make it in this Thursday.

With Leah Moore and John Reppion’s Sherlock Holmes #2, Sherlock Holmes & Kolchak #2 and the Ians Edginton & CulbardHound of the Baskervilles out this week we should up and move to Baker Street for the day. You won’t be able to walk past the latter without having a peek at our exclusive Gosh! bookplate, the very first of the lot to be Victorian Gosh-themed. We blogged about this a month ago so go have a read if you haven’t already.Another cracking creative duo unites for Will Eisner’s The Spirit #29 – Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche of Mister X fame! Newsarama have a preview of the story which somehow sees The Spirit wind up in the middle of a feud between an old tattooist and his hipster rival all because Ellen Dolan wants to get inked.

Then it’s a veritable trevor trove of creators in the Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant-Size Special #1 – a who’s who of comics, if you will. We’ve got Jeff Parker, Scott Gray (Fin Fang Four), and Roger Langridge (Fred the Clown) writing, with Dennis Calero (X-Men Noir), Sean “Cheeks” Galloway, Craig Rousseau (The Perhapanauts), Cameron Stewart (Seaguy, Transmetropolitan), David Williams, and Kevin Nowlan illustrating so it should be as giant as the name suggests. Speaking of Langridge, about a fortnight ago we got a pile of his mini-comic The Show Must Go On Chapter 1: Mackerel and then I promptly forgot to say something in the weekly mail-out because I’m rubbish. It’s the first collection of his webcomic which can be seen every Tuesday here, or at least that’s the way it used to be until he had to do stuff like Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant-Size Special #1 to ward off starvation and ruin and whatnot.

Jordan Craneis someone who should be far more famous than he is. I liked The Last Lonely Saturday and his new stuff in Uptight is great too – even Boing Boing thinks so! The long-awaited third issue is out this week (the last was seen mid-2007) and that BB post even has a couple of preview pages for your perusal. In a side note, while poking about I also noticed they’ve linked to the New Yorker preview of Robert Crumb’s Genesis. (It’s not out yet. I’m only showing you.)

If you haven’t had enough of Grant Morrison after last week’s Batman & Robin/Seaguy double-bill keep an eye out for the Final Crisis hardcover featuring the art of J.G. Jones (52 Covers, plus a brand new cover for this collection), Carlos Pacheco (Superman) and Doug Mahnke (Black Adam). At a whopping 352 pages, it collects not only the core series but also the Final Crisis: Submit one-shot and Superman Beyond #1 and #2.

Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #1 (of 3) is the beginning of a new mini-series by Phonogram’s Kieron Gillen and sees Bill embark on an insane mission to hunt down and kill Galactus for scoffing the wrong planet. Gillen’s very excited about it as you can see on his blog. As well as the new material this issue also reprints Bill’s very first appearance from the pages of Thor #337 by Walter Simonson.

American McGee’s Grimm #2 looks to be another instalment of delightfully nuttiness. We’ve still got a few copies of #1 kicking about so you can pick ‘em both up at the same time and pretend you got there at the very beginning. The interior art’s rather wonderful and probably of interest to fans of Ben Templesmith (who did the cover for this one that Grant Bond didn’t do), and Eric Powell. Dwight L. MacPherson has some preview pages from the first issue up on his blog.

You’ll find more sinister doings in The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft #2 illustrated by the brilliant Tony Salmond who doesn’t really do comics anymore so it’s a rare treat.

This series is a bit like Lovecraft’s own short story Pickman’s Model in the sense that the monsters are real (and if you’ve not read that story I’ve ruined it for you now) but instead of just standing around posing they’re out killing innocent people and leading the trail right back to Lovecraft’s doorstep…

Apparently Ron Howard has signed on to do the movie already. It’s news to me. Check that link for preview pages from the first issue (which we’ve still got if you missed it).

In small press this week we’ve got a new one from Marc Ellerby, previously mentioned on this blog when This is a Souvenir: The Songs of Spearmint & Shirley came out. When he’s not drawing pictures of himself in the Kochalka-y, Scott Pilgrimy autobiographical Ellerbisms he’s working on Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter which he plans to turn into a series. He says...

Chloe Noonan is a monster hunter (duh) but it's tough being one when you don't have any powers and you have to bring your friend along with you. She's not even that bothered about saving the world really, as running around gives her a stitch. It's a tongue in cheek look at fantasy and puts the b-list character in the foreground. It's less about hunting monsters and more about getting the bus.

And finally, Joel Meadows went along to the Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill (them again) with Christopher Frayling talk at the ICA and writes about it here. By now he’s probably got more photos of Alan Moore than Alan Moore himself, but from all the ones I’ve seen I think I like this best:

And that’s that. I won’t be here next week as I’m going on holiday by mistake.-- Hayley